12 Angry Men Essay

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Name: Shweta Chakraborty Date: Wednesday, June 7th, 2023 Unit 5: Final Assessment Class: #703
Twelve Angry Men Vocabulary Study
Reginald Rose’s drama, Twelve Angry Men is a novel that illustrates the biases, empathy, logical reasoning, and prejudices that still occur in the courtroom during a trial today. The classic book discusses discrimination and the use of logic and compassion in the American justice system to determine a verdict.
Twelve Angry Men depicts a jury of eleven jurors and a foreman who took an oath to determine the defendant's verdict and vowed to put aside their prejudices while doing so. The jury is supposed to cast their ballots after deliberating whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. Moreover, …show more content…

The jury starts the trial by figuring out the boy's motive for trying to kill his father in the first place. The jury casts the first vote, and eleven jurors find the boy guilty of murder. However, the eighth juror doubts the evidence and votes the boy is not guilty of homicide, triggering a new discussion among the jurors about the old man's testimony. Even though the elderly man had sworn to tell the truth, it was later discovered that he had lied when the jury asked how, given his age and condition, he could have run to the stairs in under fifteen seconds. They discovered it would have taken at least forty-two seconds for the elderly man to run from his bedroom to the stairs after Juror 8 acted it out. Because of this revelation, some of the jurors who initially believed the defendant was guilty changed their vote to not guilty, as they began to doubt the other evidence and question the other …show more content…

While she was about to go to bed, the woman claimed she saw the boy murder his father with a knife. But, as stated by Juror 8, she would not have been able to see the boy stabbing his father because she wears glasses, and the only thing she could have seen was a blur of the father being murdered. This final analysis resulted in a vote of eleven to one in favor of guilty. In the end, all of the jurors agreed unanimously that the boy was not guilty because all of their discussion points towards the boy not being guilty. The jury members prepare to return to the courtroom and acquit the boy as they leave the jury